Life Under the Row Covers

I put the heavier row covers on the garden Wednesday afternoon. The Spinach/Lettuce bed got the heavier fabric cover and the Root Vegetables/Some Greens bed got the plastic cover. Since it was still warm and sunny on Wednesday, I left the ends open on the plastic tunnel.

You can see that the plastic tunnel started getting steamy almost immediately. I also started recording the temperatures outside and under each tunnel. Each morning (except most weekends), I’ll be recording the previous day’s maximum temperature and the overnight minimum temperature.

So far, this is what we’ve seen:

Wed. 11/10 (Sunny, windy)

Outdoors: Min = 38, Max = 67

Fabric: Min = 45, Max = 78

Plastic: Min = 40, Max = 86 (with the ends open)

Thurs. 11/11 (Cloudy, rainy, windy)

Outdoors: Min = 46, Max = 60

Fabric: Min = 49, Max = 62

Plastic: Min = 50, Max = 65

It will be really interesting to see what the minimums are for the next few days when we don’t have much sun to warm things up during the day.